Objectives: 1. Lipids which contain sphingosine (4-sphigenine) can be oxidized by 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyanobenzoquinone at the 3-hydroxy position and then may either be quantitated by measurement of absorption at 230 nm or be reduced with NaB3H4 to gain a specifically labelled compound (M. Iwamori, H.W. Moser, R.H. McCluer and Y. Kishimoto, Ciochim. biophys. Acta 380, 308-319 (1975). It is intended to utilize these methods to assay levels of such compounds as ceramide, cerebroside, sphingomyelin and sulfatide in biological materials, as well as to prepare labelled compounds for studies of their in vitro and in vivo metabolism. 2. The lipid composition of tissue obtained at autopsy from a patient with Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease, characterized by myelin deficiency, will be examined with the intention of gaining diagnostic information which may be useful during life. 3. Studies will continue on rat liver steroid sulfatase which has been purified approximately 32-fold from microsomes in good yield. In particular the specificities of this enzyme toward such sulfate esters as estrone sulfate, DHEA sulfate, testosterone sulfate and p-nitrophenyl sulfate will be compared with an eye to resolving the question whether steroid sulfatase and aryl sulfatase are identical proteins.